PETA in a Dogfight over its Euthanasia Practices

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) euthanized
almost 90 percent of the animals sheltered at the group's
headquarters in Norfolk, Va., in 2012, and the organization is
taking heat for it.

Critics are charging PETA — renowned for its aggressive
anti-cruelty campaigns — with hypocrisy after the group's
euthanasia statistics were posted on
the website of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and
Consumer Services.

PETA, however, insists the allegations are financially motivated
by an industry group whose "goal is to damage PETA by
misrepresenting the situation," said Jane Dollinger, spokeswoman
for PETA, in a statement.

"It seems PETA is more dedicated to publicity stunts than to
keeping the animals in its own care alive," Justin Wilson of the
Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) told the
Daily Mail.

"It's the height of hypocrisy for PETA to demonstrate for the
'rights' of rats and pigs, while killing tens of thousands of
pets. It's time that the Commonwealth of Virginia finally
reclassifies PETA's pet shelter for what it is — a
slaughterhouse," Wilson said.

The CCF is a nonprofit organization "devoted to promoting
personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices" from
"animal-rights misanthropes and meddling bureaucrats," according
to its website.

And the CCF, which receives financial support from the
restaurant, food and beverage industries, has locked horns with
PETA in the past.

"This is old information regurgitated with a slant by a front
group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle
ranchers, and other animal exploiters that kill millions of
animals every year — and do so not out of compassion but out of
greed," PETA's Dollinger wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Most of the animals we take in are society's rejects:
aggressive, on death's door or somehow unadoptable."

Each year, between 3 million and 4 million dogs
and cats are euthanized in the United States, according to
estimates from the Humane Society of the United States.

"Anyone who is shocked to learn how many animals have to be
euthanized annually should ask themselves if they're spaying and
neutering their companion animals, adopting from shelters instead
of buying from breeders and pet stores, and demanding higher
animal care standards in their own communities," Dollinger said.